“You can have nothing else to be afraid of,” said Meredith, in his careless tones. “A search by the police is nothing unless there happens to be something for them to find out. Nothing is of any importance unless it is true. They may search till they are tired, but, so long as there is nobody in hiding, what can it matter? Don’t trouble yourself about nothing. Let me take you back to your comfortable fireside.” “No, no,” said Mrs. Harwood, more and more troubled; “I will stay here.” He had not, it was evident, found the way to save her, with all his philosophy. “No?” said Meredith, interrogatively. “It’s rather cold here, however, after the cosiness of the drawing-room. I hope you’ll not catch cold. If it is any satisfaction to you, of course, there’s nothing to be said: but I should think you might let me look out for these fellows and send them off. Julia and me,” he added, with a wave of his hand to Julia, and the smile which was so exasperating. He kept wondering all the time where Janet was--Janet, who had disappeared without attracting any notice, and who probably, he thought, had helped to smuggle Dolff away somewhere, uselessly--because when such an accusation was once made, it was much better to brave it out. It was like the folly of a woman to try to smuggle him away, when the only thing was to brave it out. “This is the only place where there is no draught,” he said, pushing Mrs. Harwood’s chair directly in front of the door which led to the wing--the door, which, on the night of the ball, he and Janet had miraculously found unfastened. The door, he remarked once more, had every appearance of being a door built up and impracticable. To say, in a carefully-kept house like this, that it was covered with dust would not have been true, but there was an air about it as if it had been covered with dust. Meredith smiled at himself while he made this reflection. His heart was singularly buoyant and free, full of excitement, yet of pleasurable excitement. He was on the eve of finding out something he wanted to find out, and he was most particularly concerned that the circumstances which favored him should overwhelm Mrs. Harwood. He placed her almost exactly in front of the door as if she had intended to veil it, and drew over one of the hall chairs beside her and threw himself down upon it. “This is the most sheltered spot,” he said, “out of reach of the door and several other draughts. If you will stay out in the hall and catch cold, Mrs. Harwood, you are safest here.” She glanced at the door as he drew her up to it with a repressed shudder. She had become deadly pale, and in the faint light looked as if she had suddenly become a hundred years old, withered and shrunken up with age. Julia, very much startled, and with eyes wide open and astonished, stood by her mother. “I shouldn’t have put her by that nasty shut-up door; there is always a wind from under it,” she said. “Hush--oh, hush!” said Mrs. Harwood, with a shiver.